In With Rainy Season... Out With Ndey Penda and Idrissa

Hi All,

It’s hard to believe that our service is so close to its conclusion.  With well less than one month left at site, I’ll admit it’s impossible to synopsize how we feel.  Kait and I have both been paralyzed by the prospect of blogging. There is just so much to say, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

Part of the reason is because we’re still desperately trying to wrap up all of our projects, or at least get them to a place where they can weather the three-month gap between our replacements and us, which limits our time for reflection and/or freaking out. 

The main cause is that because our emotional state at any given moment has little to no bearing on our emotional state 15 minutes later.  The emotional roller coaster of the past two years continues with the same amplitude, but a much shorter wavelength. (Pardon the mixed electro-magnetic/theme park metaphors)  One minute I’ll be walking to buy phone credit and get accosted by children (or worse, adults) and aggressively asked to offer them everything from money to a soccer ball to a plane ticket to America, thinking, “I sure won’t miss this stuff in America…”  The next minute I’ll get back to the wonderful sanctuary of our home, greeted by Papa Gorra and Fallou screaming excitedly and asking if we can go into the garden and work, thinking, “I’m really gonna miss this stuff in America…”

I find solace in how I reflect back upon challenging and formative events/times in my past.  The hard, painful or sad aspects fade with time or get romanticized and recalled as much less difficult than they were at the time.  The loving, wonderful, and satisfying aspects tend to not fade.  We will always love the Diop family and will continue to be involved in their lives, despite the distance conspiring against us.  Furthermore, I firmly believe that as time passes we will only increase in our knowledge and appreciation of how profoundly formative our time here has been, both for us as a couple, and as individuals.

Anyhow, enough of the reflective stuff.  No time for it anyway! 

This morning, sitting with the family drinking coffee, I noticed something a little strange.  The bread came wrapped in a torn British newspaper page.  I first observed that sadly the crossword was IMPOSSIBLE.  (Apparently my handle on British idioms, puns and pop culture isn’t what I thought it was.)  Then I started reading aloud to the kids and Yaay, which they thought was the FUNNIEST thing since “Who’s on First?”  (which might, now that I think about it, be extra confusing in Wolof because the word for “Who” is also a common last name).  After I read aloud all the paper had to say, which was, other than the crossword, the beginning of a book review and the end of an article about the resurgence of a species of Kite in Wales, Yaay gave it a go.  She can’t read in the strictest sense… or at all, but she’s a hell of a faker.  Hearing a Wolof pretend to speak English is simultaneously offensive and hilarious.  She sounded like a mix between Beaker from the Muppet Show and a drunken goat with a head cold… except somehow even more nasally than that.  Every so often she would throw in a nasalized “thank you very good,” as it is the only phrase she knows in English.  It makes one wonder why Senegalese venerate American culture so much when they think we sound so, so very horrible when we speak.  I guess perceived extravagant wealth gets you forgiven for sounding like a distressed goose.

Storm rolling in above our house.

The rainy season is fully here.  Everything is SO green!  Granted most of the green is weeds, but it’s still such a wonderful change from the brown/tan of the nine dry months.  Our garden is taking off in the best way.  All the perennials and trees bounced back so fast.  It’s a little sad that we’ll be gone before we can harvest any beans, okra, bissap, sweet potato, or melon.  Luckily the family has shown such enthusiasm for the garden, we have every reason to think they’ll continue to maintain it and they’ll certainly gladly harvest its bounty.  Kait’s even been taking our siblings into the garden and teaching them species names, so they can orient our replacements.  Even little Papa Gorra can spout off a pretty impressive list of species/varieties.  The little horticulturalist even seems to have given up his nasty habit of ripping up plants when he tantrums.

Our banana area at the beginning of the rainy season

Our banana area ~1.5 weeks into rainy season.  The Italian basil and sweet potatoes are exploding

Unfortunately we have another plant-ripping-out problem plaguing us, and you can’t get them to stop destroying everything by shaming them in front of their siblings and kicking them out of the garden.  You may have actually seen news of this little turd in various media of late…

PCVs call them cat rats (because they’re about that size) and in Wolof they’re called kaña.  Here, they thankfully don’t have any mines or tuberculosis to sniff out.  Unfortunately, this means they get their super sniffers to work on our garden.  They like the way roots smell… and taste.  Funny thing about plants: they need roots to live.  Ever since Lady Obama went to live with her new family, the cat rats have taken over the yard under cover of night.  We wake up most mornings just hoping they didn’t dig up anything we’re especially attached to.  Most people here, when confronted with a kaña problem, just leave out poison, usually dissolved in water.  Neither one of us really has the heart for that, though.  Especially in light of the fact that they’re so dang smart, despite their appearance.  Also we have way too many cats in and around our compound for leaving any poison and not fully expecting to also take out a couple cats and/or kitten, which wouldn’t feel super-great.  So our solution is to fill in the burrows that they dig (and pour gallons upon gallons of dirty dish/laundry water in them) and cover the things we want to protect with thorns from the desert date tree (they grow up to six inches long and are mean as hell). 

Aloe looks like a tentacled alien when looked at from above.  We brought this specific aloe from America and it was about 3 inches tall, now it’s mighty enough to
devour a platoon of Space Marines.

Other than that little (giant) rodent-monster mucking up our work, our garden has been a delight.  The rainy season this year is shaping up to be better than last, which means the garden is pretty self-maintaining.  This is especially true because instead of seeding the free-standing bigger plants (okra, bissap, hot pepper, etc.) we just grabbed them from where they naturally germinated, and transplanted them where we wanted.  It’s indicative of how much we grew last year that we were leaving fruit on the plant long enough to dry, and drop its seeds.  The rain does mean that we have to weed, but it means that everything is SO green and happy.  It’s a fun time to be a gardener here.

Kait hard at work in the garden.

Happy Cat continues to help us in our gardening endeavors from his special spot in the corner.

When we haven’t been having fun in our garden we been hard at work with trees.  Having completed our tree nursery creation and seeding trainings before we went to America to visit, we’ve just now completed the final loop of nurseries and trained everyone in how to outplant and maintain their precious trees.  Some groups have been more committed and successful than others, but all in all, we feel great about our contribution this year. 

Teaching the finer points of tree transplantation.

Kait’s counterpart, Mackiny, continues to be the shining star beyond compare.  He is so motivated, but also committed to raising up his whole community with him.  He had in his personal tree nursery far more trees than in the rest of ALL of our nurseries combined.  We teased him that he was the Nguick branch of Eaux et Fôrets, the official government tree service.

Mackiny pointing toward trees in his nursery… like a BOSS

Eaux et Fôrets Nguick: Note the child in the humorously numbered jersey.

Kait’s been far more adventurous than me in the past month.  She got weave put in her hair for Korité (end of Ramadan).  It was about a four hour process, but everyone thought she looked so dang pretty and should leave it in for months!

She left it in for nearly a week.  Something about getting heat rash on the back of your neck from the irremovable 6lb hair-pulling polyester fur hat you’re wearing doesn’t scream, “keep me in forever!”  It was a cool look while it lasted.  Even I thought so.

When she went out on tour with Eaux et Fôrets, they came across an illegal charcoal-making operation.  Charcoal is tightly controlled, as it is one of the leading causes behind the rampant deforestation.  It was about a week before Korite, so we can safely assume that after the men got busted, their Korite was ruined.  Sad, but Boniface Gomis, the new commander of E&F Guinguinéo enforces the law with a  pretty iron fist.  It’s too bad the trees can’t thank him, because the people whose charets he impounds sure don’t.  He also gave a huge bag of charcoal to Baay, since Kait took part in the bust.  All she did was tackle and cuff one guy though, so an entire bag was very generous.  I am, of course, lying.  She actually unmasked Old Man Diallo who was pretending to be a genie to scare Eaux et Fôrets away from the operation.  To which Old Man Diallo said, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling Toubabs!”

Bagging and loading the contraband

The saddest thing about leaving so soon is how much we’ll miss our family, and how much they’ll miss us.  For this reason we’ve been spending more time hanging with the Diops than in the past.  We play soccer in the evenings.  We roughhouse after lunch.

We have ugly face contests.  Which I usually win, or mash Papa Gorra’s face all the way into the winner’s circle.

I think the kids will really miss us, but they’re young and resilient.  They’ll latch onto our replacements quickly and hopefully our replacements will be open and quickly accept them into their hearts.  I’m more concerned about Yaay.  She doesn’t really have that much social stimulation.  She goes to the market, and sells fatayas at night, but she can’t really speak frankly in those settings about the things vexing her.  Kait has become a real confidante of hers on all matters: child stuff, health issues, even marital problems and beyond.  I don’t know where Yaay will go for sympathy and commiseration after we leave.  I hope she’ll be able to find another patient ear and compassionate shoulder to cry on after she loses her Ndey Penda.  Time will tell.  Anyhow, Kait’s making an extra effort to make Yaay feel special in this last leg of our service.  Yaay taught her to cook Maffé (peanut sauce that goes over rice) as it is Kait’s favorite dish here, and as any good wife must, she must be able to cook her man some solid lunches once we get back to America.

I think we'll be able to translate her knowledge into a pretty excellent Crock Pot Maffé recipe.

I guess I didn't write anything about our time in America.  Here goes: It was great.  Saw beloved friends in Boston and New York.  Beloved family in Rhode Island.  Met Mira MacArthur Jost for the first time.  Maaaaaaan is she cute!  Didn’t get any spinal meningitis!  Drove a car.  Ate food.  Drank beverages.  Great time all around.  We’re about to live in that country for the foreseeable future, yadda yadda yadda.

This Past Month...

Biggest challenge:  Wrapping up everything before we have to go.  Relationships.  Work projects.  Our lives for the past two years.  A lot of loose ends need tying up.  Not a lot of time left to do it.

Most exciting/best experience:  Even though we saw it last year, so we should be somewhat less impressed this year, seeing the garden explode with green after the first few good rains has been so fulfilling.  All the trees and little perennials are covered in leaves.  Everything just grows with so little effort.  A cat rat hole filled in here… a dozen caterpillars smashed there... is such a manageable price to pay for the level of satisfaction we, our family included, get out of the garden.  To say nothing of the produce.

Thing we are most grateful for:  Wonderful work partners.  Not everyone we work with is a rock star, but some of them really are, and it’s hard to imagine working here without them.  In them, if nowhere else, we know our work will carry on beyond our departure.  Mackiny Tall, Mariatou Diallo, and Lemu Ba:  THANK YOU ALL for being the best!

This coming month we’re looking forward to…

The last of the tree outplanting, including a municipal tree planting project in which we’ve served as primary coordinators and liaison between Eaux et Fôrets and the Mayors Office… i.e. cat herders.

Continuing rainy season and beautiful green-ness.  Hopefully without the accompanying staph infections.

Maybe a big party for all of our work partners and friends, akin to the party we hosted when team Fritsche was in town. 

All of our final meetings/clearances.  Will Med say we’re healthy?  Will our bosses say we were great volunteers?  Will the grants coordinator say our grant is all squared away?  Will the bike guy say he has our bikes? For all this, and more, (like the results of our poo samples!) STAY TUNED!

COS.  In less than a month, we will be RPCVs bound for America.  Crazy town.

Wish us courage and strength as we close this chapter and get ready for a new one.  We hope to see you soon, those few of you who have actually stuck it out with us, and didn’t quit reading the blog after the first few posts!  Congratulations!  You too should get a cool new acronym to describe how you’ve committed the last two years of your life to reading our blog, even when it was boring or light on visual media.  Perhaps RPCVSTBR for “Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Supporter Through Blog Reading.“  Bit verbose, but if I know one thing from Peace Corps, it’s that no acronym is too beefy for the US Government.  Thank you for your readership.

Love,
Peter